Christmas Top 10

Christmas Top 10

Christmas is almost here so Boardseeker set Windsurfing Muso Jan his hardest review to date: come up with his Top Ten Christmas Songs! Jan takes us through his spiritual journey of discovery though the minefield of festive songs!

Jan: I soon realized that to come up with my top 10 Christmas songs this was going to be a huge task. Firstly I couldn’t think of any Christmas songs that I liked. Secondly, I confess I have a certain amount of cynicism when it comes to Christmas – don’t get me wrong – I love giving gifts and the holiday atmosphere but I hate the commercialism that Christmas seems to now ooze and for me this stifles the ‘magic’ of Christmas

Finally when I did start to think about what songs to review I didn’t know where to start! What actually qualifies as a Christmas song? What counts? Is it simply a song about Christmas? (Of which there are many). Is it a song that was released at Christmas, isn’t specifically about Christmas, but is considered to be a crimbo song even though it didn’t reach number one? (Of which there are many, many more). Or is it a song that was number one at Christmas? (Of which there are admittedly less, but let’s be fair, in my opinion a lot of them are shite).

Taking all of this into account I found I was still struggling. At one end of the spectrum were traditional Christmas carols and at the other end of the there are no less than four Muppets who have charted with a Christmas songs! A duet by Gonzo & Rizzo – “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” and then Miss Piggy and Kermit have both had solo releases with “Santa Baby” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”. I spent the weekend at my brother’s house for a bit of a pre-Christmas get together. I thought, he’s got kids so I am sure he’ll know what to recommend – so we tuned into TMF which was doing a bunch of Christmas programmes, and to my horror they were all top something or other Christmas songs!!!

There was the top number ones, the top Christmas Albums, the top this, the top that, and the top other Christmas this, that, and the other. What’s more, there was even a Top Cliff Richard Christmas songs!!! This task was getting worse.

So I dug deep into my memory to find the songs that reminded me most of Christmas as a child and the irony hit me square in the face. Two Christmas “classics” that are completely overplayed and completely over cheesy charted straight in at number 2 and 3 respectively both from 1973 and show my age.

Artists name:

Roy Wood & Wizzard

Album:

I wish it could be Christmas Everyday

Artists name:

Slade

Album:

Merry Christmas Everybody

There it was, I had started my list, I didn’t have a number one yet, but I had a start. I thought harder about Christmas and soon figured that a few crooners wouldn’t be out of place with the songs that conjuror up images of log fires and wooly Christmas jumpers:

Artists name:

Bing Crosby

Album:

White Christmas

Artists name:

Dean Martin

Album:

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Artists name:

The Chistmas Song

Album:

Nat King Cole

Now I was getting into the flow, what’s more I found that many of these Christmas songs had been covered over and over again, so I randomly picked “All I want for Christmas” recently covered by Maria Carey and found that Emo rockers My Chemical Romance had also covered it – result! So that was a new entry at number 7 and a damn fine rockin version it was too.

Artists name:

My Chemical Romance

Album:

All I want for Christmas

Now there wasn’t much space left in the chart, so probably the first and most memorable big hitting, fund raising song became an obvious choice, and rightly so.

Artists name:

Band Aid

Album:

Do they know its Christmas

BBC helped with number nine; the topically-controversial-politically-correct-censored-by-the-BBC-this-year-like-duh-did-no-one-ever-listen-to-the-lyrics-before?

Artists name:

Pogues and Kirsty McCall

Album:

The Fairy Tale of New York

Finally, I couldn’t resist including the song let loose from Spinal Tap’s album Break Like The Wind:

Artists name:

Spinal Tap

Album:

Christmas with the Devil

But I was still missing a number one and then I heard it on the radio and sent it up to the top spot, straight in at number one:

Artists name:

Robby Williams

Album:

Walk this Sleigh

I had never heard it before so that gave it instant kudos – and the line “Happy birthday Jesus Christ, Here’s the Spice Girls’ merchandise” kind of sums up my search of Top Ten Christmas number ones. Have a great Christmas – the long range forecast looks like Santa is bringing a lot of wind to play with!

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